Category Archives: Hunger

A Nobel prize for feeding the world can’t erase the shame of Yemen’s starving children | David Beasley

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I feel pride, but can’t shake my sense of failure that the World Food Programme’s media moment comes as hunger rages

I have done the usual things you do before an awards ceremony. After extensive high-level consultation, I think I now have the right suit and tie. Carefully folded in my pocket is a long list of people to praise, many far more deserving of praise than I. I am ready.

Growing up in a small South Carolina town, I never imagined life would bring me to this moment and allow me to be part of the wonderful, blessed enterprise I have found in WFP, the World Food Programme.

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Yemen ‘one step away from famine’ as donors dry up amid Covid, UN warns

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Urgent alert issued over millions struggling with ‘catastophic levels’ of hunger as less than half of required aid received

The window to prevent the return of famine to Yemen is rapidly closing, UN agencies have warned, with a new assessment showing millions could head further into hunger in the coming months.

The alert came as a World Health Organization food security assessment showed thousands of people are slipping into famine – a number that is predicted to triple in the first half of next year – while millions more have seen declining access to food.

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UN issues $100m emergency funding and calls for global effort to avert famine

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Organisation says money pledged is ‘not enough’ and warns of potential for huge number of child deaths

The UN has earmarked $100m (£75m) in emergency funding for seven countries deemed at risk of famine, warning that without immediate action the world could see “huge numbers of children dying on TV screens”.

The climate crisis, Covid-19, conflict and economic decline have created an “acute and grave crisis” in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, where millions of people are facing emergency levels of food insecurity, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the Guardian.

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‘The numbers floored me’: hunger in Pennsylvania hits highest level since pandemic’s start

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Demand for food aid surges in state and across country, with 54m potentially facing hunger by year’s end

Charles Bennicoff hasn’t worked since last winter. He’s an experienced landscape gardener but the mom-and-pop business he worked for in Allentown, Pennsylvania, cut its staff after losing most of their contracts during the pandemic.

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Ending world hunger by 2030 would cost $330bn, study finds

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Research suggests that by targeting enhanced aid money more effectively and with greater innovation, a solution is possible

Ending hunger by 2030 would come with a price tag of $330bn (£253bn), according to a study backed by the German government.

Research groups compiled data from 23 countries and found international donors would need to add another $14bn a year to their spending on food security and nutrition over the next 10 years; more than twice their current contribution. Low and middle-income countries would also have to give another $19bn a year, potentially through taxation.

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Aid cuts and Covid force Uganda refugees to brink of starvation

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More than 90,000 face extreme hunger with another 400,000 hit by food crisis, says report

Nearly 500,000 refugees in Uganda are struggling to eat as a result of cuts to food aid and Covid-19 restrictions.

More than 91,000 people living in 13 refugee settlements around the country are experiencing extreme levels of hunger, according to the latest analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), published this week. More than 400,000 refugees are considered to be at crisis hunger levels.

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‘Coming here is a necessity’: demand for food aid soars in US amid job losses

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Nationwide the need for aid at food banks and pantries has surged amid worst unemployment rate in modern times

Neisha Davis cradles brown paper lunch bags in the crook of one arm, while holding on to Demitri, her wriggling baby son, in the other and keeping a careful eye on Naya, her four-year-old daughter, as she runs around the church car park with another little girl.

It’s hectic but the free packed lunches have become a crucial part of their daily nutrition. So everyday at noon the family make the two-mile journey from Homewood, a low income predominantly African American Pittsburgh neighbourhood with no grocery stores, to the East End Community Ministry’s pop-up lunch stall in East Liberty.

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Children forced to beg or work as hunger eclipses fear of Covid-19 in Yemen

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Hikes in food, water and petrol prices adds to ‘triple emergency’, as coronavirus spreads unchecked and humanitarian aid dwindles

Families in Yemen are having to send their children out to work and to beg as concerns mount over rising food, water and petrol prices, a survey has found.

Despite coronavirus spreading undetected across the war-ravaged nation, data collected from more than 150 households in three provinces of southern Yemen found that respondents were more worried about going hungry than contracting Covid-19. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which led the survey, found nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents reported being unable to afford food and drinking water. Prices for sugar and vegetable oil have jumped by more than 25% in the past year.

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With total control, President Déby is Chad’s greatest threat to stability

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‘President for life’ knows he is protected by France while Chadians die of hunger

Once a year, there is a ranking of the conditions of the world’s nations. It’s like a country’s report card, with health, education and living standards as key indicators. The UN’s Human Development Index tells citizens – and campaigners like me – how well or badly a country is doing.

Since 1990, the year Idriss Déby seized power, ousting his mentor Hissène Habré in a bloody war, Chad – a landlocked former French colony that separates the Sahara in the north from the savannah in the south – has consistently ranked at the bottom of the index, fluctuating between 160 and 187 (out of 189).

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The Guardian view on the disappearing aid: a shake up with lethal consequences | Editorial

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Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, levels of hunger and poverty are going to rise. Given this, the abolition of DfID is a serious mistake

This week’s warning from Unicef is stark. Without immediate action, children under five will die in their tens of thousands in the coming year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The UN agency estimates that an additional 6.7 million children will become dangerously under-nourished unless at least $2.4bn can be mobilised. The risk is that 10,000 more children a month will die.

Hunger is not confined to poor countries: the call for 1.5 million more children in England to get free school meals is evidence of that. Ministers ought to act at home. But acute hunger is a much more acute problem in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. What’s more, Unicef is far from alone in pointing out the vulnerability of the world’s poorest people to coronavirus. The World Bank is pencilling in the first increase in poverty in two decades. The International Monetary Fund says deep recessions in advanced countries are having a marked impact of remittances – worth $360bn in 2018 – into low income and fragile states.

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‘We had to eat our seeds for planting’: 10 million in Sudan facing food shortages

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UN warns coronavirus restrictions prevent access to most vulnerable and rising prices are leaving many going hungry

Almost a quarter of the population of Sudan are going hungry as conflict, rising food prices and the coronavirus take their toll.

About 9.6 million people now face severe food shortages, the highest number recorded in the country’s recent history.

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‘Open your eyes’: Yemen on brink of famine again, UN agencies warn

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Millions face devastating hunger if relief efforts are not stepped up in a country ravaged by war, locusts and now Covid-19

Yemen is in danger of an imminent return to devastating levels of hunger and food insecurity, according to new analysis released by UN agencies.

The World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Unicef say that the percentage of the population predicted to face acute food insecurity in southern areas of the country will rise from 25% to 40% by the end of the year.

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Hunger could kill millions more than Covid-19, warns Oxfam

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Starvation looms from Afghanistan to Haiti as coronavirus restrictions wipe out incomes and cut food supplies

Millions of people are being pushed towards hunger by the coronavirus pandemic, which could end up killing more people through lack of food than from the illness itself, Oxfam has warned.

Closed borders, curfews and travel restrictions have disrupted food supplies and incomes in already fragile countries, forcing an extra million people closer to famine in Afghanistan and heightening the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, where two-thirds already live in hunger.

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Malnutrition leading cause of death and ill health worldwide – report

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Coronavirus highlights weakness of food and health systems, as Global Nutrition Report finds one in nine of world’s population is hungry

An overhaul of the world’s food and health systems is needed to tackle malnutrition, a “threat multiplier” that is now the leading cause of ill health and deaths globally, according to new analysis.

The Global Nutrition Report 2020 found that most people across the world cannot access or afford healthy food, due to agricultural systems that favour calories over nutrition as well as the ubiquity and low cost of highly processed foods. Inequalities exist across and within countries, it says.

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Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in

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Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy

The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.

On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.

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‘Race against time’ to prevent famines during coronavirus crisis

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UN calls for international solidarity to ease effects of Covid-19 on food security

Vulnerable parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa, are at risk of sliding into famine as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, while humanitarian relief efforts are being hindered by lockdowns and travel restrictions, according to the UN.

Experts raised the spectre of unrest similar to that seen in 2007-08 when food price rises sparked riots around the world, destabilising fragile states and fuelling conflict in ways that are still being felt. They told the Guardian that the world could still avoid such a crisis, but time was running out.

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Coronavirus could double number of people going hungry

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Exclusive: multinationals write to G7 and G20 urging leaders to keep borders open to trade and avert global food crisis

Food supplies across the world will be “massively disrupted” by the coronavirus, and unless governments act the number of people suffering chronic hunger could double, some of the world’s biggest food companies have warned.

Unilever, Nestlé and PepsiCo, along with farmers’ organisations, the UN Foundation, academics, and civil society groups, have written to world leaders, calling on them to keep borders open to trade in order to help society’s most vulnerable, and to invest in environmentally sustainable food production.

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Drought leaves tens of thousands in Lesotho ‘one step from famine’

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Rural areas worst hit as massive fall in food production causes severe hunger for a quarter of country’s population

Tšepo Molapo gazes into space, worrying about where the next meal will come from. Next to him, his two-year-old granddaughter plays, oblivious of their desperate situation.

Molapo’s children all died at illegal mines in neighbouring South Africa, where they had trekked in search of work.

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UN sounds alarm over unprecedented levels of hunger in southern Africa

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Women and children bear brunt as drought and extreme weather leave tens of millions short of food

Southern Africa is in the throes of a climate emergency, with hunger levels in the region on a previously unseen scale, the UN has warned.

Years of drought, widespread flooding and economic disarray have left 45 million people facing severe food shortages, with women and children bearing the brunt of the crisis, said the World Food Programme (WFP).

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Failure to end civil war in Yemen now could cost $29bn

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NGO warns conflict may drag on for five years if current peace efforts fail

A failure to capture the present rare chance for peace in Yemen may potentially cost the international community $29bn (£22bn) in further humanitarian aid if the current civil war continues for another five years, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) warns on Monday in a new report.

It is also likely to prolong Yemen’s inability to return to pre-crisis levels of hunger by 20 years just as famine conditions are improving.

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